DC break the home Jinx

Deccan Chargers created History by winning their first home game ever in IPL at cuttack and also registering their first win against Kings XI in 5 matches but not before Irfan Pathan tried to pull off the improbable with an audacious innings. With this result Kings XI slumped to its third straight defeat in the competition.

King XI innings

Chasing 171, Punjab never looked like getting anywhere near. Malvinder who was the star in the last match with the bat was out for a duck when Suman ran him out with a direct hit. It got worse when Kumar Sangakkara was sent back by fellow Sri Lankan Chaminda Vaas for no score as he dragged the ball onto his stumps. I think that should be enough for him to earn his place back into the Srilankan side: D. Yuvraj failed for the 3rd time. Adrian Barath could not do much on his Debut. Mahela Jayawardene too departed trying to be too cheeky and was bowled by Symonds. While all this was happening Ravi Bopara stood his ground to keep Punjab in the hunt.

The match was hurtling towards a dull climax as Deccan reduced Punjab to 68-6 requiring a mammoth 101 from 48 balls. But Irfan Pathan had other plans. He took on the challenge and started to belt the bowlers from the 17th over when he got 21 runs of RP Singh despite losing chawla in the first ball. He raced to 60 of just 28 balls and Kings XI needed 19 runs of the last over. Considering that 48 runs had come of the last 3 it was interesting to see who would bowl the last over and Gilchrist surprised everyone when he called on Jaskaran to bowl his only over of the day. It was a length ball and Irfan tried for the fence over but he could not get past Andrew Symonds who starred for the Chargers with both bat and ball. With Irfan gone it was the final nail on the coffin. Sreesanth managed to get 3 boundaries of the 5 balls he faced but Kings XI were 6 short of an improbable win. PHOTOS

Deccan Chargers Innings

Sangakkara decision to put DC into bat backfired as Gilchrist 12 ball 33 manic knock charged Deccan to 43 in 3 overs. But against the run of play Gilly tried mistimed a pull giving Mahela an easy catch. VVS retired hurt in the 4th over when a wayward throw from Srivastava smashed into Laxman’s fore-arm – he probably thought Laxman was batting in Hyderabad, instead of Cuttack :P. Gibbs and Symonds got together and DC reached 100 in the 10th over. Symonds started aggressively unlike the last match where he was slow to start. Yuvraj struck in his first over when Gibbs tried to hit him out of the park but missed the ball completely which smashed into the middle stump. DC suffered a double blow when Rohit was superbly runout by Mahela. It got worse when Anirudh singh got out first ball as he edged one to Sangakkara off Bipul Sharma. It could have been 5 down had Sangakkara not missed an easy stumping to get Suman out. Symonds reached his 50 in 34 balls but Yuvraj got him as bipul took a stunner at longon. Vaas stuck some meaty blows in the end to help the Chargers reach 170 which could well have been 200 had DC not lost too many wickets in the middle overs. PHOTOS